FRANCE 139 



able to watch over and protect such salmon as escaped the net fisher- 

 men and millers lower down and came up the Scorff and E\\6e to 

 spawn. I made many journeys to Paris, and got from the Conseil- 

 G^neral of Finisterre a special enactment, similar to that which 

 governs English rivers. The results were marvellous. Ten years 

 later I caught on the rod one hundred and thirteen salmon, thirteen of 

 them in one day. The Ellee and Scorff had become as good as 

 any rivers of Scotland or Ireland, and I can only compare them 

 with the Irish Blackwater and Mallow. Trout had become equally 

 plentiful, and the result had been obtained by merely protecting 

 the waters against poachers and respecting nature's arrangements for 

 the breeding of the fish, without any other attempt at restocking. 

 I tried at the same time, during those ten years, to introduce new 

 kinds, and the Director of the Trocadero Aquarium in Paris turned 

 out some hundreds of Californian salmon in the waters of the Ellee. 

 Not one of them was ever recaptured. They simply vanished, and 

 I was content for the future with local species. 



So that Brittany could, with a similar system of protection, 

 acquire, or rather recover, very great wealth of fish. The same 

 applies to its game, so plentiful in former days and now so scarce. 

 My renting of the rivers compelling me to take over as well the lands 

 and woods adjoining, I was able to affirm that partridges, hares, and 

 rabbits reappeared in a few years in considerable numbers, notwith- 

 standing the great quantity of foxes, polecats, weasels, and every 

 conceivable bird of prey. 



The yield of my fisheries soon became common knowledge, and 

 very high prices were offered the owners who had let the rights to us. 



